Seattle police accompany hundreds of protesters as they march on the Port of Seattle on Monday.

SEATTLE – Hundreds of protesters marched Monday on the Port of Seattle, where a massive floating Arctic oil drilling rig is parked on the waterfront.

Organizers say their goal is to block the gates to Terminal 5 and engage in civil disobedience to stop any work on the rig.

The Polar Pioneer, which Shell hopes to use to drill off Alaska’s northwest coast this summer, arrived in Seattle on Thursday. Hundreds of protesters in kayaks and other vessels turned out on Saturday for a protest dubbed the “Paddle in Seattle.”

They plan to continue their protest on land Monday.

The protesters say they’re concerned about the risk of oil spill in the Arctic and the effects of burning fossil fuels on climate change.

Hello, strangers! I was tempted to make a video about this, but videos are very time consuming, and I just wanted to touch on some problematic issues I’ve noticed going on in the vegan community.

A few years back, I wrote this post, expressing my concern about animal liberation advocates “preaching to the choir” as a large part of their work. I wrote that this is concerning to me because the issue of animal liberation won’t gain any ground if we just engage in back-patting congratulatory exercises. Which brings me to…

In the past couple of weeks on YouTube, I’ve noticed several prominent vegan activists upload videos with some rather disturbing (and some might consider, antagonizing) messages. Here are some (I’ll just let the content of these videos speak for themselves):

The bottom line is, these are extremely problematic videos, no matter how you slice it. Non-vegans don’t deserve to live….vegans are superior to people who are not vegan…human rights issues don’t matter because animal rights are more important (funnily enough, I hear that same fallacy of relative privation directed the other way around by non-vegans defending their habits, and a fallacy is still a fallacy no matter who’s using it).

As I read the comments under all these videos, I notice every single person praising these antagonizing comments is a vegan who agrees with them. Yet, at least in the case of the Freelee videos, I see many video responses from defensive non-vegans. In certain social justice circles of Facebook, the Gary Yourofsky video is already getting a fair amount of backlash. So…my question is….is any of this productive?

I mean, there are some days I get so exasperated with humankind, and its general callousness toward nonhuman animals and the planet, as well as the callousness humans in certain positions of privilege have toward humans they consider “beneath them.” It’s exhausting, and can seem so overwhelming. But…I see nothing to be gained from antagonizing people.

Think of it this way, people may already have a lot of stereotypes in their minds about vegans; that we feel we’re superior to other people, that we love all animals, and hate all humans, and you know….maybe that is really the way some vegans really feel. But my thought is, if you want to get people on your side (as I think the goal of every vegan activist should be), how productive is it to feed into those stereotypes, and to give people a reason to antagonize you?

I’m not saying that people who just refuse to accept the message don’t exist; of course such people exist. But if we really have the facts on our side (that animals suffer and value their lives, that animal agribusiness and exploitation are killing the planet, and that you can thrive on a whole plant based diet), what is there to be gained from giving them reasons to dismiss you further?

GRANITE FALLS, Wash. — The Big Four Ice Caves are in their “most dangerous state” due to unseasonably warm weather, U.S. Forest Service officials say.

Parts of the cave have collapsed and the Forest Service says people should stay on the trail and not go into the caves. The Big Four Ice Caves are a popular hiking destination in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

“The cave is in a condition that we would normally not see until at least September,” said Matthew Riggen, lead field ranger with the Forest Service.

Even during seasons with normal temperatures, the caves are prone to falling rocks and ice.

In 2010, 11-year-old Grace Tam was killed at the caves by falling ice.

Tam was standing on an ice field with her family when the accident happened.

Second video in my intersectional veganism series, The title more or less says it all, but the video touches on some things that aren’t often brought up about this topic (namely, presuppositions about food access, and why it’s counterproductive).

This was the first video in an ongoing YouTube series I have about intersectionality in veganism. I started this series because not only do I think more social justice movements should begin recognizing animal liberation as a worthy cause (because freedom is a birthright, for everyone), but also because I think there are things people and groups within the vegan movement could do to become more inclusive. This video goes into detail into an issue I have already touched on in this space. Enjoy!

I hesitated to write this open letter because frankly I think open letters can be corny and self-serving. However, after watching your intersectionality pizza video, I sincerely wanted to reach out to you to open up a conversation about a topic that is usually over-looked, or teased within mainstream feminist spaces: non-human animal rights. As a young black vegan feminist, I feel like I might be able to offer a different perspective on intersectionality, taking into account non-human animal bodies. I would urge you to at least consider checking out black vegan feminist literature in hopes that it might offer something new to your articulation of feminism and…